Competency XX: Leadership

Related Task: Job Shadowing

Narrative Description of task: Spend a minimum of one entire day (including after school and evening responsibilities, if any) shadowing the cooperating administrator.

Narrative Description: Assist administrator, when appropriate, in accomplishing responsibilities. Maintain a journal of activities and prepare a thoughtful analysis of the number, nature and focus of activities, and with whom the administrator interacted. Describe and assess the decision-making process and style used by the administrator in responding to various categories of demands or problems. Identify several crucial lessons the day taught about the art of administration and school leadership.

A key part of the clinical experience is the opportunity to job shadow for an administrator. Since I already serve in an administrative role, I took the opportunity to shadow at Holland High School with Principal Deb Feenstra, and Assistant Principals Kevin Griffin and Anna Clawson. Holland High serves 1,400 students 8-12 grade including a variety of unique ESL and special education programs. This experience provided me with a different viewpoint than that of being an administrator at a small school. At roughly ten times the number of students, Holland High offered unique learning experiences for me on the day that I shadowed. These experiences ranged from staff and student interaction, to security and discipline, as well as several higher level planning meetings. The morning started off with a search for a student. This particular student was observed having a loud conflict with his brother in the hall and then did not show up for first hour. This was of particular concern because this student has a specific emotional impairment that could have

helped create further issues. We were able to find the student quickly and he worked with a counselor to determine how best to solve the issue. This incident brought up several questions about security within a large building. In order to help with communication between administrative and secretarial staff, each staff member has a radio. This allows for quick communication throughout the building. Each administrator credited the radios with allowing the staff to be more efficient in many aspects of daily school life. I would highly recommend this, or a similar communication system to be in place for any future administrative endeavors. During the day I also was able to take part in several higher level planning meetings. The first of these consisted of meeting with the lead counselor for a discussion regarding language requirements and the possibility to count middle school credits under michigan law. This discussion brought up legislative rules and guidelines that the principal had to have knowledge of. Following that meeting, Mrs. Feenstra met with the Athletic Director to discuss possible scheduling and conference realignment. What I admired most about the meeting was that she listened and gained as much information as she could, and then still trusted the athletic director to make the right decision. I gained an important lesson of leadership by observing that exchange. Namely, if Mrs. Feenstra had only made the decision on her own, she would have undermined any authority or responsibility that the Athletic Director had. Conversely, had she taken a very laissez faire approach and just consented without getting information, it would have shown her to be detached and not caring. Her choice to listen and engage, and then empower the Athletic Director created the most positive outcome for the situation. This style of leadership is incredibly important to have, especially in a large building with over 100 staff. This allows staff to stay engaged and creates the willingness to work with building administrators, rather than in spite of them. Mrs. Feenstra also dealt with several financial issues that day. The first being a need to go through knew professional development request forms and decide which ones would be approved and funded. Coming from a small building, I had no idea that there would be so many

to look through. there were thirteen different forms and each had to be weighed by cost, value, and relevance of training. In the end, Mrs. Feenstra approved six of these and began sending emails to those that filled out forms. Shortly thereafter, the curriculum director came by for a meeting about summer school funding and staffing. This worked out well as I have served as summer school director the previous three years. The discussion quickly moved to cost savings as the state was not willing to fund summer school in the same ways it had in the past. Mrs. Feenstra advocated for a full summer school vigorously and warned of the detriments to not having one. This type of advocacy was interesting to see because it was at odds with a central office administrator. It required conviction and some courage, but also a confidence and belief that her viewpoint would be trusted.

After this meeting was done I spent the afternoon with the Assistant Principals. The first task I helped with was getting several computer labs and classrooms ready to accommodate students that would be displaced during the MME testing that was going to occur. Kevin Griffin, Assistant Principal, was responsible for the testing and scheduling for HHS. In order to accommodate students being moved, several technology fixes needed to happen in certain labs. This required working with the Director of Technology. The sheer logistics of the MME test went far beyond anything I had encountered with testing at my building, and it showed me great insight into some of the behind the scenes work that is often unappreciated in order for things to work smoothly.

The rest of the afternoon was spent with Anna Clawson, also Assistant Principal. Our first task was meeting for a pre-observation for the economics teacher I would be observing in the coming days. During our pre-meeting a discipline issue came up that needed Mrs. Clawsons attention. An anonymous student came forward to the Dean of Students and told her about a

fight that was going to happen after school. Mrs. Clawson had a good relationship with both students so she decided to pull them from class in order to mediate the problem. I assisted her with this and after speaking to each student separately we had a successful mediation. Both students agreed to work out their differences in other ways and took down all the negative social media they had been posting about each other. This event brought us to the end of the day where we finished the day by directing traffic in the front driving circle and talking to a student on a bus about being respectful while riding.

I learned many things by shadowing at HHS. First and foremost, I was amazed at how many layers of separation there were from the Principal and the students. At my current building, every issue is seemingly under the purview of administration. This layering was good in many ways because it allowed the Principal and Assistant Principals to focus on a variety of other concerns that affect the entire building. However, this type of layering could be bad if it creates artificial barriers between the students and administrators. Thankfully, Mrs. Feenstra, Mr. Griffin, and Mrs. Clawson all work to be involved in many aspects of student life. This is an incredibly difficult balancing act that I was very impressed with.

The second important lesson I learned was one of scale. Most issues that occurred at HHS were similar to issues that occur in my own building. However, when the building has ten times the number of students, the scale of issues becomes magnified as well. This also makes it especially important to delegate and manage time efficiently. Each administrator had different styles of organization and personalities, but each remained effective in that they adapted to HHS and its culture.

Regardless of what position they held, each administrator had many different duties that were essential in running a school. I am very appreciative of having been given the opportunity to

shadow them for a full day, rather than just see glimpses of what they do. This holistic view has given me a much greater appreciation for other administrators and has given me the perspective to be more effective in my own endeavors. While no single day could possibly represent the totality of administration in a large school, I believe that this day was indicative of many things, and will be helpful as I look to further my career in educational leadership.